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This ova is dumb as fuck, and I know that’s a strong and harsh way to begin a review but I find no other nor more appropriate way to sum it up. The premise has a woman paying a private investigator to find her criminal husband to see him one last time, it’s sentimental but also kind of cheesy from the get go. At least the pacing is not bad, since even though the protagonist is seemingly fooling around, he is getting close to people related to his target and gathering information about him, that way he also comes to learn stuff about him, and since every character he encounters is related to the man he is searching, both that guy and everyone else gets fleshed out at the same time by revealing more about their shared backdrops each time. The movie it’s mostly about that, there isn’t much plot in it aside from showing the lives of the criminal and his acquaintances.
Visually the anime is good for a single minor production from its time, character designs are simple and generic, the artwork suffer from some quality drops, and motions are simple and not very good. Backgrounds and special effects, however, elevate the overall visuals. The sound is very forgettable and unnoticeable, weak sound effects, weak music, very average voice acting.
The main problem of this title is presenting a fake grey morality, it tries to judge the horrible actions of the man everyone is searching from a moral standpoint, and what they do with him at the end feels satisfactory because both his wife and friend take a big part on it, but it also tries its hardest to justify every single thing he does. Exploring a character to understand his motivations is one thing, justifying the horrible things he does is another completely different. Not only that but the conflict could have been resolved much sooner if every single person here didn’t act so stupidly and illogically. Also the anime becomes idiotically melodramatic at the end by attempting to present a situation as complex when it’s not, it’s very simple as the outcome comes to prove. Finally, the closure it tries to give to its story and bad guy was so corny and out of place, the movie tries to say that he found forgiveness, redemption and a sweet, touching and emotional reunion but it fucking isn’t possible to buy it, he was a horrible person through and through and his train of thoughts was completely irrational and only gave an even worse impression of him, he didn’t deserve any happy ending, and certainly not one where he happily reunites with his first victim.
This is supposed to be the adaptation of just one case, the 170th, of a long manga, in turn spin-off of an ever going way bigger manga franchise, which is why there is no context given about the protagonist nor any of his coworkers, plus, if this is its level of quality, then there’s no reason to delve into it. Despite being a short watch, it is still a waste of time.
4/10
